Snippy
Snippy '(aka the "'Sniper") is the second main character in the webcomic series "Romantically Apocalyptic" by Vitaly S. Alexius. Sniper's birthname is Charles Snippy, which explains why he tends to be called "Snippy". Even though he has often reason to doubt it, Sniper is the most sane member of the Captain's squad (including the new recruit Engineer, who at least shows tendencies of a mad scientist). Before the apocalypse Sniper belonged to the 1% of the population unable to connect their mind to the Internet via a neural interface and was thus unable to Interact with the Directorate's "ANNET" system. Background Originally, the Sniper worked for the GOOD Directorate Inc as a stereotypical, low paid pencil pusher. A while before the apocalypse happened, he received special survival training and was transferred to the "Dead Zone Tourism" branch of G-Directorate, where he led tourists and scientists on journeys through the wasteland that Earth had become due to massive chemical and radioactive pollution caused by the Directorate (and other companies). The last tour he guided resulted in the deaths of every single one of the scientists he was supposed to protect, leaving him alone in the wasteland. It seems that the tour was to investigate an anomaly, that the Sniper described as a 'wishing well', and that the scientists killed each other while possessed by the desire to have it for themselves. The anomaly promised the Sniper that all of his wishes would come true; he ignored it, but secretly fears that it was his wish that brought the beginning of the Apocalypse, since he was sick of the ANNET-controlled humanity. Since the ANNET's transmitter towers were causing him terrible headaches and nightmares, The Sniper began sabotaging its servers. It seems he may have even been part of a plan by the 1% to take out all the transmitter towers. The Sniper doesn't remember though, whether he actually went as far as sabotaging ANNET's core. Whatever the 1% may have been planning, the apocalypse appears to have interfered with it. ANNET says that there is a 76% probability that Snippy actually led the 1% Unconnectable's attacks on her servers. Due to his inability to connect, The Sniper was able to survive (with all of his memory and mind intact) from ANNET going berserk, when Captain corrupted her data banks by spilling tea over them. It was discovered in a page of Pilot's diary, that The Sniper claims to be an atheist (although this was after Pilot tied him to a couch and tried to get him to join "The Church of Captain") Though he does also thank God for being spared one of Captain's missionshttp://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/62. Snippy is British, but that doesn't play into the story very much. Appearance Charles Snippy, or "The Sniper", uses a custom-created gas mask with two filters and blue goggles with white goggle-caps. The goggle-caps on the mask can move like they are his actual eyebrows, giving Snippy a wide range of expressions. He wears a black and white "New-Aged Style" Good Directorate issued officer uniform consisting of a jacket with a hoodie and black pants. It has been shown that this uniform is 100% fireproof. Until Comic #26, he carried a rifle with him. Due to Captain's rescue plan, it was destroyed inside of an Alien flying saucer where Snippy had forgotten it. He grabbed a new one in Comic #42 during a battle with the Biomatrix. Snippy has been seen wielding a handgun as well, on occasion. He is seen weilding his pistol more often in the Annet's Reawakening Arc. In the pre-apocalyptic flashbacks, The Sniper's face is shown to be thin with scruffy dark brown hair and light blue eyes. It is unknown how much his appearance has changed since then. After being impaled on Pilot's sword, and surviving, Snippy is depicted in the same way as he usually is in the post-apocalyptic world, with the exeption that he has a giant red chest wound and Pilot's sword sticking out of the front and back of his torso. Personality Maybe aside from the Engineer, The Sniper is the only person in Captain's group capable of being deemed "sane", unlike Captain, who is utterly insane, and Pilot, who lost most of his memories after being disconnected from the ANNET. As a result, it is usually The Sniper who is forced to carry out Captain's dangerous and often bizzare requests. The Sniper still feels guilty not being able to protect that last group of scientists he was supposed to guide through the wasteland before the apocalypse. He feels even more guilty about the possibility that he might indirectly have caused the apocalypse either by an unconscious wish to the 'wishing well' anomaly or his attempts at destroying the ANNET. He fears loneliness, as it leads to him brooding about the mistakes in his past life. So he rather endures Captain's, Pilot's and Engineer's company over living alone. Another of The Sniper's fears is to lose his sanity to radiation poisoning and going as mentally insane as the others. After overhearing a bug, Captain's mug and the straw talking, The Sniper is half-convinced that this fear will become reality soon. He still hopes that there was a logical explanation for everything happening, nevertheless. Shortly after that, The Sniper was kidnapped by an alien judge and confined in the spaceship of the Arbitrator. It tried to convince the captured sniper, that the Captain is only another personality of The Sniper. The Sniper also opened his backpack and recovered Captain's mask, hat, goggles and scarf. This evidence threw The Sniper into a deep identity crisis. Although in the aftermath of the Ancestors Story Arc, it is shown that the Captain is not another personality, but instead placed his/her facial wear into the Sniper's backpack. While in the pre-apocalyptic flashbacks, The Sniper rarely could sleep due to the ANNET-induced nightmares and unaffordable sleep-time, while in contrast, his post apocalyptic self is a rather heavy sleeper. Captain and Pilot have taken advantage of this repeatedly to dress him up in crazy costumes or play other pranks on him, while The Sniper is quick to sleep. Skills and Equipment The Sniper's headgear consists of a gasmask with two filters and a goggle with blue glasses and goggle-caps. He has begun to wrap a scarf around his head to avoid injuries, since he gets hit by blunt objects quite often thanks to Captain's and Pilot's shenanigans. The Sniper's jacket has a black and white pattern, several pockets and shows a small (Good-Directorate) G-emblem with the label 'fireproof' on the left front side. Aside from that, The Sniper wears a black shirt and black pants as well as black boots and gloves. The Sniper usually carries a rifle around, although further items in his possession are: Captain's shopping lists, a 'property of Captain' note, a Geiger-counter, an old calendar of the year 2012, and a pocketknife. He briefly had a 'bag of cancer summoning', a rubix cube and a half destroyed cellphone in his possession as well. The firearm that Snippy has changes from time to time. He has been seen using two different rifles and a handgun at times. During the ANNET's Reawakening story ark he was armed only with a trowel that amazingly stood up to repeated attacks by Pilot's sword. After the ANNET's Reawakening story ark Pilot's sword became lodged in Snippy's chest. It aparently doesn't hurt, and he can remove it to use it. Snippy also has taken custody of the Biomatrix-scarf, which has allowed him to use his genetic memory to see his long past and a probable far future. The Biomatrix can also heal Snippy from otherwise fatal injuries, or at least prevent said injuries from stopping his ability to perform. As his title suggests, he is the squad's sniper, meaning he should have the necessary sharp-shooting skills. He been seen shooting firearms on hand twice in the story so far, showing he has some ability to fire a loaded firearm, although he has never been shown to fire a sniper-type ballistic weapon, so the Captain may have make Charles Snippy the "Sniper" of the group in response to his last name sounding similar. The Sniper also seems to have a fairly good resilience to stand up to all the traumas and shocks that he seems to receive in carrying out the duties that his insane boss assigns to him. Last but not least, The Sniper is a very fast runner, being able to outrun "Photoshop" and the giant-spider-form of the Biomatrix 117. The Sniper seems well versed in survival skills, able to survive for an undefined time inside a mutated whale and keep surviving in the nuclear-hazard city. He learned his survival skills, such as tracking and gun-handling, during his training as a Dead Zone tour-guide. Similar to the Captain, he seems to have extremely uncommon luck. Unlike the Captain's luck, though, it doesn't tend to bring him solutions, but it does at least allow him to survive all odds, from crashing rocket-propelled subways, all the way to near-death bodily injuries, even when it includes completely illogical events in order to make it happen. It is unlikely it is purely an extension of Captain's luck, because Sniper has shown it in circumstances and locations that have nothing at all to do with Captain him or herself. Snippy also has the (uncontrollable) ability to disrupt ANNET's wireless network. Snippy creates a seeming black hole in the worldwide wireless network. Those around him are unnable to connect to ANNET's servers. This may be an extension of his innability to connect to ANNET's servers. It is unknown if the rest of the 1% Unconnectable also emited a dampening field. Snippy's disruption at first made it hard for ANNET to locate him, until she recalibrated to search for an area that seemed to consume her wireless signal. Near Death Experiences The Sniper has nearly died (or actually died) many times. The first time that the Sniper nearly died was when the Captain attached a jet engine to a subway car and crashed the two of them into the Lemonade Worshipper's Cult's "church." Snippy managed to survive that experience, but found himself stuck upside down. Captain said he was going to get help. But instead left Snippy hanging until he fell. Later, Snippy had two near death experiences in a relatively short time. While sent on a shopping spree by the Captain, Snippy was captured by a number of survivors. They tied him up, took his supplies and rifle and were about to kill him when the Biomatrix arrived. The Biomatrix killed the survivors and turned them into puppets. In the confusion Snippy managed to escape his bonds and grab a rifle. He fought off the survivor-puppets and managed to escape only to run into the full Biomatrix. Snippy was quickly captured by the Biomatrix, and Captain sent Pilot in to rescue Snippy, he too was captured. The Biomatrix absorbed their memories and killed Pilot and Snippy. Shortly after the Biomatrix left, the Lifealope showed up and brought Snippy and Pilot back to life. At one point Pilot became convinced that Snippy wanted to steal Captain from him (which he didn't), and so he came up with a plot to have Snippy eaten by a whale. Inside the whale Snippy found a many commodities, furniture, and a pile of food. He built a sort of home in the whale, until one day the UPS man showed up in the whale to deliver a letter from PIlot. The letter revealed that Pilot had planned for Snippy to be eaten by the whale. After that a number of spiders erupted from the pile of food and tried to kill Snippy. Snippy barely escaped from the whale, and tried to kill Pilot in revenge. The Arbitrator mistook Snippy for Captain because Snippy was in possesion of Zee Mug, and trapped him above the earth, then condemed him to death. While he was trapped, and later while he was falling Snippy was able to relive a caveman ancestor's memories, and a probable future descendant's memories thanks to the Biomatrix scarf. Snippy survived his long fall by landing on the Captain. When Pilot's DEX programming was reactiveated he entered a mission to kill Snippy. They fought in a burning builidng and ended up falling many stories down to the ground. Snippy was impaled on Pilot's sword. The fall damaged Pilot once again, and he lost his long term memory once more. Pilot felt bad for having "Broke Snippy," and brought him to the Captain, whom he implored to fix Snippy. The Captain poured the scalding hot contents of him mug into his mouth, which Captain and Pilot beieved cured him. However the Biomatrix revealed that the temproally disalligning Snippy so that "Immediate Cellular Death" could be prevented. Snippy may be technically dead at this point, but he is still fully functioning. The Gas Mask The Sniper's gas mask is specially designed to be expressive, possibly to make him more relatable during his duties as a tour guide. The goggle-caps, always left opened in a 90º angle, act as his eyebrows, allowing for a wide range of often-cartoonish expressions. During the Cancer Story Arc, when The Sniper is shown without his gas mask during the flashbacks, his face was always at least partially obscured. Relations to other characters Until the Engineer joined the squad, the Sniper was the most serious person in the group and the only one with any amount of common sense. This still puts him at odds with the more whimsical Captain. The Sniper fights with Pilot often, perhaps originating from a plot by Pilot to get him eaten by a whale. This resulted in the Sniper attempting to strangle Pilot after he escaped. Additionally Pilot likes to play tricks on him or steal his stuff, while the Sniper is sleeping - with or without orders by the Captain. Snippy has stated on more than one occasion that he has little to no affection for either Pilot or Zee Captain, however, he has also stated that he prefers their insane company to being alone with his thoughts. At the very least Captain and Pilot keep Snippy occupied enough that he doesn't have time to go mad with the guilt of having possibly caused the apocalypse. Dr. Alexander Gromov, AKA Engie, created ANNET, the neural network that caused Snippy so much pain. For a long time Snippy didn't seem to have any idea that who Engie was. And as such saw him as just another minion. Snippy didn't particularly like Engie, mostly because he knew there was something about him that he didn't know. Also because Engie usually seemed to regard him with suspicion. Recently the Biomatrix revealed to Snippy Engie's true identity. Snippy then proceeded to use Pilot's sword to threaten Engie into using his admin privileges to shut down ANNET. During the beginning of the Ancestors Story Arc, The Sniper gets hold of Captain's "cancer-scarf." To his dread, he soon realizes that the scarf in fact is, what remained of the Biomatrix 117. Since the Biomatrix was trapped in the same way as the Sniper is by the Arbitrator, it seems to no longer wish to harm the Sniper and instead even granted him his wish for another flashback. With the help of the Biomatrix, The Sniper gained access to some of the genetic memories of his earliest ancestors, and a glimpse into his future ancestors. The Biomatrix now provides Snippy with information it thinks is relavent. The Biomatrix has also saved Snippy's life a couple of times. Occasionally the Biomatrix seems to have plans for the future of Snippy, seeing him as a tool, partner, or henchman, depending on the situation. The Lifealope once brought Snippy back to life after being killed by Cancer. Category:Characters Category:Near Death Experiences